Pundits, prognosticators, and analytics predict the Canucks 2024-25 season
No one saw the Vancouver Canucks coming last year.
Heading into the 2023-24 NHL season, the Canucks were nobody’s pick to win the Pacific Division. Heck, most of the pundits, experts, and analytical models thought they’d be lucky to crack 90 points. The vast majority of people predicted the Canucks would finish sixth in the Pacific, ahead of only the woeful Anaheim Ducks and San Jose Sharks.
Just one model gave the Canucks better than a 50% shot at making the playoffs: Dom Luszczyszyn’s model at The Athletic predicted 92.4 points for the Canucks and a 52% chance at getting into the postseason.
The Canucks blew all of those predictions out of the water, finishing the season with 50 wins and 109 points, finishing five points clear of the Edmonton Oilers for first in the Pacific, third in the Western Conference, and sixth in the NHL.
It was an outstanding season that caught a lot of people off-guard. This year, they won’t have the element of surprise on their side.
“It’s going to get harder,” said Rick Tocchet to Darren Millard during the offseason. “It’s going to get really hard. We’ve raised the bar. We were a bubble team and there was a lot of noise in Vancouver — they haven’t won, there’s a lot negativity and not a lot of trust.”
“But now we’re not going to surprise anybody,” he added. “They’re going, ‘Okay, they won the Pacific Division.’ There's no easy games for us and it's going to get harder.”
Pundits predict top-tier season from Canucks
Along with going from being the hunters to the hunted, the expectations have been raised for the Canucks heading into the 2024-25 season, both from Canucks fans and from the larger hockey world.
Where the Canucks were previously considered a coin flip to make the playoffs, now they’re considered a lock, with many prognosticators predicting another 100+ point season.
Let’s take a look at some of the predictions from the experts, pundits, and analytical models.
As much as these predictions were way off for the Canucks last season, fans might hope they’re a little bit more accurate this season.
The vast majority see the Canucks as the second-best team in the Pacific Division behind only the Edmonton Oilers, which is fair enough considering they beat the Canucks in the playoffs and came within one game of winning the Stanley Cup.
For those publications and models that predict points, the Canucks average a projected 101.5 points. That’s certainly a step back from last season’s 109 points but still comfortably in the playoffs and pretty fair considering how much went right for the Canucks last season.
The Hockey News Yearbook is lowest on the Canucks, but still predicts a third-place finish in the Pacific behind the Oilers and Vegas Golden Knights. They give the Canucks 22/1 odds to win the Cup, which works out to a 4.3% chance.
Adam Proteau from the Hockey News, however, doesn’t want to bet against the Canucks after they stormed to the top of the Pacific last year. He predicts the Canucks will finish first in the Pacific.
“Only one other team in the Western Conference — the Edmonton Oilers — has the all-around excellence that Vancouver has,” said Proteau, “and we’d argue the Canucks have a better group on defence and between the pipes.”
The experts over at USA Today are high on the Canucks’ chances, projecting a 47-26-9 record for 103 points, well ahead of the Golden Knights at 96 points. They do sound a note of caution, however.
“The Canucks could drop off depending on how long injured goalie Thatcher Demko is out,” said USA Today’s Mike Brehm. “Arturs Silovs will need to play like he did in the playoffs.”
Finally, the crew over at The Hockey Writers anticipate a 105-point season for the Canucks — barely a step back at all from last season.
“The Canucks did ride some crazy PDO percentages to start the season, but they were an excellent team, and their offseason moves should help build on that,” said Alex Chauvancy at The Hockey Writers.
That’s what the hockey pundits have to say about the Canucks’ chances this season; what about the numbers?
Analytical models bullish on Canucks’ 2024-25 season
The various analytical models used to predict the 2024-25 NHL standings may differ on the exact numbers but they all agree on one thing: the Canucks are going to finish second in the Pacific.
Micah Blake McCurdy over at HockeyViz used his Magnus model to simulate the 2024-25 season one million times. The prediction of 94.9 points for the Canucks is the most likely result from those one million simulations.
“The sharp division in the Pacific is between the two very weak teams (Anaheim and San Jose) and the more neatly clustered remainder,” said McCurdy. “The Oilers remain the class of the division (of the West, in fact) but several teams are fairly close in overall talent.”
A 94.9 point projection is much lower than the other models but it should be noted that the predictions from HockeyViz are conservative on the whole, with the highest predicted point total being 101.8 points for the Carolina Hurricanes.
The standard deviation for his Magnus model simulations is 8.6 points, which is quite wide: that means most results were in a window from around 86 points to 104 points.
Evolving-Hockey’s model, which was quite low on the Canucks last season, is much higher on the team this season, projecting 101.0 points and an 87.9% chance of making the playoffs.
Their model definitely doesn’t believe in the Golden Knights, incidentally, projecting them to finish with 88 points and land sixth in the Pacific. Of course, they projected the Canucks to finish sixth in the Pacific with 89 points last year, so maybe the Golden Knights will do exactly what the Canucks did and win the division.
Peter Tanner at MoneyPuck runs his win prediction model to simulate the NHL season 100,000 times to come up with his predictions. This year, his model likes the Canucks’ odds, giving them an 80.4% chance at making the playoffs and a 5.6% chance at winning the Stanley Cup — the seventh-best odds in the league.
The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn got a lot of hate from Canucks fans for underrating Quinn Hughes heading into last season, ranking the eventual Norris Trophy winner as a “Tier 3B” player.
Luszczyszyn’s model, however, was the closest to correct about the Canucks last year, even if the 92.4 points it predicted came woefully short of the Canucks’ actual results. This season, his model is once again the most bullish about the Canucks, giving them a 95% chance at making the playoffs with a projected 105.4 points.
“The high-end talent at the top of Vancouver’s lineup is one of the driving forces behind its success,” said Luszczyszyn. “The Canucks have franchise cornerstones with elite ceilings at each position — Hughes on defence, Demko back in net and Pettersson up front.”
More than that, the model has the Canucks as the fourth-best team in the NHL and gives them a 9% chance at winning the Stanley Cup, which may not seem like much, but most Canucks fans would take an approximate 1-in-10 chance at the Cup.
Finally, there are the gambling odds at PlayNow, which have a financial interest in being accurate. They’re a little bit conservative on the Canucks, setting the over/under at 99.5 points, which is higher than only the HockeyViz projections.
Still, PlayNow predicts a second-place finish in the Pacific for the Canucks, a 72.5% chance of making the playoffs, and a 5.9% chance of winning the Stanley Cup.
The average prediction from all of these sources is 101.5 points for the Canucks to finish second in the Pacific and seventh in the NHL, with an 81.2% chance to make the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs and a 6.2% chance at winning the Cup.
What about you, Canucks fans? Do you think the prognosticators have it right? Will the Canucks finish second in the Pacific? Will they make the playoffs? And will they win the Stanley Cup?
